Hot controversy in these hours in Spain, after the release of a video showing two police officers kicking, punching and beating two unarmed black men in a street in Madrid. In the images, which have gone viral on social media, a policeman can be seen pinning one of the two suspects to the ground, throwing himself on top of him and putting his arm around his neck. A second officer, however, gives him two truncheon blows, before trying to concentrate his other attention on the other boy, hitting him with several blows on the torso and neck. The episode occurred on Friday 29 March in Lavapiés, the multi-ethnic neighborhood of Madrid. The video was released by Serigne Mbaye, a former regional deputy of Podemos in the Spanish capital and known as an anti-racism activist. «What is the justification for such a violent intervention?», asks Mbaye on X. «The pressure and violence of the police in Lavapiés have no name».
The reactions
The violent attitude of the police officers sparked indignant reactions from the political class. The Ministry of the Interior writes El Pais, has now opened an internal investigation to shed light on the incident. Initially, the National Police reported that the officers had intervened after a “fight between some people” had been reported, and that the two men who appear in the video, who were later arrested, had shown an aggressive attitude towards them. According to the Sup police union, which intervened in defense of the policemen involved, the images of the episode circulated were instead “incomplete”. Meanwhile, yesterday evening – Sunday 31 March – a sit-in was organized in Lavapiés to protest against “institutionalized racism” and to denounce “the abuse of violence” by the police. In fact, many residents of the Madrid neighborhood maintain, the local media write, that particularly aggressive interventions by the police against black people are “systematic and not isolated cases”.
